DANAË

Throughout the video, we see a collage of amateur footage of anonymous women 'twerking'. Koen Theys found the material in abundance on the internet. This contemporary phenomenon seems to indicate these women are only able to make contact with the outside world via their webcam. Theys connects this seclusion with the Greek myth of Danaë a recurring subject in the course of painting history. Danaës father locked her up in her room, after an oracle had predicted that her son would murder him. By locking Danaë up, he intended to keep her from having offspring. But Zeus, the supreme god, succeeded in entering her room in the form of rays of light and rain of gold. Koen Theys reinterprets this myth in Danaë, manipulating the incidence of light in the amateur films so that it evocatively enters the women's rooms through windows, televisions or computers. It is clear that each clip is an attempt of a person to gain attention from the world. The modus operandi however, turns this original goal into a painful confrontation. The faces are carefully hidden, accentuating the impersonality of the bodies put in a submissive position, and the performances are held in the sad interiors of suburban apartments somewhere in the world. With the conviction of a sociological study, this sum of individuals performing a new post-industrial ritual becomes a lyrical ode to humanity as a lost and disturbed insectlike species.